It’s great to live in a community that is health-care rich. Some communities have sparse health-care facilities and even non-existent opportunities to receive optimal care. As things like allergies, broken or sprained limbs from the multiple sports taking place in and around schools and little leagues, we are fortunate to live in an area that has an abundance of health-care facilities to meet all of these various needs.
Although the combined towns of Oak Park and River Forest have a population of about less than 100,000 people, we have four hospitals nearby: West Suburban (now acquired by Resilience Healthcare), Rush Oak Park, Loyola Medical Center, and Gottlieb). This does not even include the multiple medical offices, Elmhurst Hospital (now Endeavor Health) and Loyola Immediate Care facilities, and even a newer facility, Oak Street Health, which caters to senior citizens.
The wait lists for medical appointments are perplexing with so many available facilities, which could be attributed to various insurance constraints. It could be worse and we could be in a medical desert.
It makes me think about the relationship between patient and facility and how fragile a relationship that is. Our tax dollars help to pay for these facilities so we need to be happy with them. Patients need to feel listened to in regard to their concerns, and not managed.
One thing I learned recently was that some medical facilities use consultants who are not staff. For example, Rush Oak Park Hospital has used consulting physicians and travel nurses instead of staff physicians in some cases, as many facilities do. Although some are outsourced, they are still responsible for your care under the facility. This means that if there’s anything that you are unsatisfied with or unsure of in your medical care, you can still address the issues.
Here are a few tips to help make those medical trips more productive:
- Whenever possible, try to go to your medical appointments with at least one other person.
- Make sure you go with a list of questions and concerns, preferably backed by reasonable and factual information to present to your care provider as to why you are concerned about a particular thing.
- Saying you saw something on the internet is inadvisable.
- Do not leave your medical office without having all of your issues addressed, and be firm in the level of care that you would like to receive.
Practitioners and medical facilities are there to serve you so get your worth. Try to develop the best relationship you can with your practitioners, but at any time if you feel the relationship is not working, do not be afraid to end the relationship and seek out a practitioner who is more comfortable for you, especially if you need a second opinion.
You might be surprised to know that doctors learn as much from us as we learn from them. It’s a more symbiotic relationship than you realize. They are also under a lot of stress internally and externally with demands that we are not privy to, so it’s good for us to realize that and adjust our relationships and approaches with them.
El Serumaga is a resident of River Forest.
